Amazon Echo Hub test: A screen to control everything at home

The Amazon Echo Hub is the best option yet for affordable, intuitive management of your connected home. If you’re looking for a way to connect your home and your devices (doorbell, cameras, etc.), this is certainly the simplest solution available. But does Amazon live up to its promises?

Design of the Amazon Echo Hub

The body of the Echo Hub is 1.5 cm thick, comparable to two Google Pixel 7s stacked on top of each other. Its all-white chassis evokes a sense of simplicity, with an elegant glass finish on the touchscreen. gallery link=”none” columns=”2″ size=”large” ids=”116366,116370″] The screen incorporates a proximity sensor at the top that uses infrared technology to detect a person’s presence, enabling a natural transition from a clock and photo display (chosen from a selection of wallpapers or personal photos) to a control panel for the connected home. Although the 8-inch screen is relatively small, it’s still sharp enough to read the time, weather and view photos even from a distance.The screen is powered by a supplied 1m80 USB-C cable, which plugs into the single port on the rear. A spacious cutout with clips is provided at the rear to wind the extra length of cable, enabling the Hub to be neatly mounted on the wall, where it blends into the decor like a smart thermostat or alarm panel. Nevertheless, a stand can be purchased separately if you plan to move the Echo Hub to different parts of the house.Physical buttons are located on the right-hand side of the device and include volume up, volume down and a mute switch for the four-microphone array, which is pretty standard for an Echo device. Sound is emitted from the top of the Hub via dual stereo speakers.Sound quality is clear enough, even at high volumes, but don’t expect much bass with this device. Amazon makes it clear that this device is not media-centric, and emphasizes this point in its “Active Media” tab, which encourages you to share the sound with your favorite Alexa smart speaker or multi-room audio group. This device is different from the Facebook Portal Plus, however, as it lacks, among other things, a powerful built-in speaker and the various features of Meta’s rival device.

Amazon Echo Hub features

Model	Amazon Echo Hub
Processor	MediaTek MT 8169A
Graphics processor	Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge
Screen size	8-inch
Resolution	1280 x 800 px
Audio	2 speakers
Music streaming	Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Spotify, Tidal, …
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 5
Bluetooth	A2DP, AVRCP, Bluetooth Low Energy
Dimensions	202 mm wide 137 mm height 15 mm thick
Weight	369 grams

Echo Hub features

Once you plug in your Echo Hub, it asks you to connect to Wi-Fi so you can sign in to your Amazon account. This synchronizes your existing Alexa smart devices and room groupings with the Hub. Once set up, you’ll notice that the Echo Hub is very different from the media-focused Echo Shows. The Echo Hub’s main menu is a simple, well-designed smart home dashboard, with panels and shortcuts that neatly organize your rooms and routines on the left side in a list. You can easily navigate between panels and live widget titles

By default, the widget collection includes a multi-camera live view, a device grouping for the room in which the Echo Hub is placed, and a device favorites tab. This gives me quick access to my most-used devices, like native compatibility with my Nuki SmartLock Pro. Device categories are always visible since this bar is at the bottom of the screen. This lets you quickly jump into your smart lights, sockets, locks, and the list goes on. You can organize the way your rooms are listed, move widgets around the screen and access the Amazon widget gallery to add things like your to-do list to view. Everything is so clearly laid out that even if you want to add a widget for recent deliveries or music recommendations, they don’t overwhelm you like they do on Echo Show 15 and keep your smart devices at the forefront of the experience. The Echo Hub is also a built-in smart home hub. It supports Bluetooth, Matter, Thread and Zigbee, so it’s almost universally compatible with a wide variety of existing smart home devices and more to come.

I had no problem connecting to my old Zigbee smart lock and smart plugs and this mesh protocol is just nice to have as it allows you to control devices locally even if the Internet is down. What I found super cool was the way it simplifies pairing a new device. With a simple voice command “Alexa, discover my devices”, you allow the Echo Hub to select all compatible and switched-on devices to sync them automatically.

Performance and navigation

As the week progressed, Amazon’s Echo Hub became a natural part of my daily routines. I mainly used it as an intercom to communicate with my other Echo smart speakers to check what my younger sisters were doing while I was cooking. Working at my dining room table, I could see who was at the door through my Ring Doorbell Pro video doorbell and know exactly when packages were delivered. Even an action as simple as turning down my smart thermostat was done seamlessly, as the animated buttons were directly visible and accessible, without having to ask or navigate through menus to get to them. I also added extra functionality by accessing Amazon’s widget gallery to add the Sticky Notes app to create on-screen reminders. On other models like the Echo Show 10, widgets are compressed into buttons that you have to touch to deploy. I was pleased to see Amazon make the most of the screen – the live widgets are why I like the Echo Show 15 so much. They make it easy to manage your smart home by leaving multiple apps open and active, allowing me to simply and quickly adjust lighting intensity, change light colors or set my smart thermostat without having to navigate menus. There’s no perceptible delay when I enter these actions, and the Hub almost feels like a wired switch directly connected to the bulbs or the smart thermostat itself. Its new MediaTek processor is responsive, so asking Alexa for the time or the weather gives you an immediate answer. This also applies to the speed with which the assistant executes actions, with Alexa turning on the lights within a second of the request. Even demanding activities like switching between live Ring camera feeds are incredibly smooth, and the image remains excellent even when zoomed in.

Amazon Echo Hub review

If you’re looking for a hub for your smart home, the Amazon Echo Hub comes in at £200, and it too has its own distinctive features. One of the Echo Hub’s main assets is its simplicity and its dual function as smart display and home controller.